Living on water: Craggaunowen Crannog in Ireland

This is an early Iron Age reconstruction based on excavations of a crannog (meaning 'young tree’). A crannog is a lake-dwelling or artificial island on which people built houses, kept animals, and lived in relative security from invaders. Crannogs were found in Ireland during the Iron Age and early Christian periods. These homesteads were inhabited during the Late Bronze Age and in some cases were still being occupied as late as the 17th century.

Crannogs were constructed by placing layers of stone, brushwood, tree trunks and even old dugout canoes on the lakebed. These were held together by wooden pilings and the platform was covered with a layer of earth or sand. On this the inhabitants built their thatched houses of wattle (woven twigs) and daub (mud) and surrounded themselves with a protective timber fence. These artificial islands were generally approached by dugout canoes or by various types of causeways or bridges.

Society of northern Europe in this period was very different when wealthy, cultured aristocrats lived in what to us look like huts or in cold stone fortresses. Their wealth was expressed by ornaments on their homespun clothing, their power in the number of men they could call to battle, their refinement in their knowledge of poetry, music and the law. Their homes were simple but they knew their ancestry going back many generations and considered themselves fully the equal of villa-dwelling Romans.

You can get a flavour of life back then at the Shannon Heritage.